


boldness stands alone among the wreck

by meliebee



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Gen, I love my tiny knife girl who has known only pain for like a decade, I would... assume, Post-Episode: s08e05 The Bells, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, arya stark if u can hear this I love u, dany and Jon aren't going to be making an appearance for a while but gendry will be, i don't even go here!!, not like in a big way but. this is outsider POV, oh also there are a few OCs, uhh more tags to come i guess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 21:27:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18881584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meliebee/pseuds/meliebee
Summary: When the woman on the white horse calls for them to stop, they’ve been walking without pause for almost two days.(That night, for the first time since leaving King’s Landing, they speak. “Where will we go?” The tanner’s boy, only a few years younger than the woman who’d led them out of the ruins of the city they lived in. “Where can we go?”“I was thinking Storm’s End,” says the woman. She offers no explanation, no demands, and no one asks any questions. They all have nowhere else to go, anyway. “But first,” the woman continues softly, “I’ll be going back to the capitol. I’m going to kill the queen.”)





	boldness stands alone among the wreck

**Author's Note:**

> hello I don't even watch GoT but I love arya stark and I'm weirdly invested in a show I'll never watch 
> 
> pls enjoy my probably v ooc story!! sorry if this sucks wooo

When the woman on the white horse calls for them to stop, they’ve been walking without pause for almost two days. “We’ll stop here,” she calls out, her voice wrecked by the smoke she’d inhaled. A few of the oldest among their party collapse at the woman’s words, their bodies folding in on themselves as they sink to the floor, but everyone else is far too exhausted to offer them anything more than a consoling pat. Lira's feet take a few moments to react to the woman's words, shuffling forwards a few steps before slowly halting. She looks around the clearing they've paused in, away from the King's Road, near a murky stream, ringed by trees. It's green. Lira hadn't realised how green it was, so consumed was she by the haze that had fallen over her mind.

The woman on the white horse carefully adjusts the bundle strapped to her chest, tucking one tiny hand back into the cloth, then swings her legs over the horse and gingerly lowers herself to the ground. From there she reaches up and lifts the little girl draped in the woman’s dusty, bloodied cloak under her arms and onto the ground. The woman lets the little girl cling to her legs and leather, running one hand absently along the girl’s charred hair. She strides towards the other horses, the few that they'd been able to find, and Lira can see how her arms shake as she lowers the children down onto the ground, but she doesn’t rest until each of them is down, leaning into each other, their big eyes red from exhaustion and grief.

She sends them off, the most coherent to help set things up into a makeshift camp, the littlest and the injured towards the centre of the camp, where they collapse into a pile of drained bodies. Form there Lira loses track of the woman, quickly pulled into helping the elderly towards the camp, draping their arms over her shoulders and hooking hands under their elbows to keep them from fainting. Then she finds herself ripping her dirty skirts into strips of cloth, wrapping them around ruined fingers and bleeding foreheads.

It’s been a long two days. They still smell of smoke, and their clothes are still stained grey. The blood on their faces, their hands and their shoes has dried. A few people have lowered themselves down near the stream, running their hands in the water and watching ash billow around their fingers, but for the most part the people around Lira move as though they’re ghosts, white and red and tear-stained. They are ghosts, in a way. The ghosts of a burning city.

Once they’ve tethered the horses and the woman has headed off into the forest with the only bow they have, when a single fire was set and then immediately extinguished, when the group allowed themselves to sink into the ground and stare at their hands, Lira thinks with certainty: they will never recover. The children hold each other close, siblings and strangers alike. The adults have been crying longer than their children. The adults have been crying _for_ their children.

The camp is silent, more silent that the woods they’ve hidden themselves in, and Lira thinks _no, there will be no recovering from this._

The woman comes back soon enough, and the little girl who rode with her goes careening into her legs, patted awkwardly on her back. She comes bearing gifts; three rabbits and two birds, sticks to fletch into arrows and sticks to roast meat with. She takes in the sight of the group, battle-weary soldiers who did no fighting and spilled no blood which was not their own. She takes in the sight of the feeble fire which was so quickly stamped out, and her jaw goes stiff.

She lights the fire herself. They watch her do it, and Lira can only see how badly the woman’s hands shake if she looks for it. The little girl sits beside the woman’s crouch and leans her head on her thigh. The babe has been strapped to the woman’s back, now. His eyes are closed, and his sleep looks peaceful. He will never know his parents. At least for tonight, pressed against the warmth of this woman, he won’t feel his loss.

 

That night, they choke down the rabbit and the bird and though there’s only enough for tiny portions, more than one person retches it back up into the bushes. The effect of smoke and ash for one thing, but also the effect of hearing, smelling, and seeing bodies burn. Lira rubs their backs as they vomit the meat, and some people throw her off, but others shudder under her hands and come unwound, sobbing dryly at the dirt, helpless and ruined.

That night, for the first time since leaving King’s Landing, they speak. “Where will we go?” The tanner’s boy, only a few years younger than the woman who’d led them out of the ruins of the city they lived in. “Where _can_ we go?”

“I was thinking Storm’s End,” says the woman. She offers no explanation, no demands, and no one asks any questions. They all have nowhere else to go, anyway. “But first,” the woman says softly, “I’ll be going back to the capitol.”

Lira’s head jerks back up. An older man, with a burnt-off beard, hisses through broken teeth. “Why the fuck would you ever go back there?”

“ _Why_ would you ever want to go back there?” Another man, who the woman had physically torn away from the husk of his wife.

The woman shifts, adjusting the babe in her arms. The little girl who won’t leave her side has fallen asleep, cheeks pillowed against the woman’s dirty breeches. “I’m going to kill the queen.”

The man who lost his wife closes his eyes. He looks pained. Lira fights the urge to fight the woman’s words, seeing how everyone else seems numb to her words. Lira doesn’t doubt that she could do it. After seeing the woman guide them all through the rubble, past soldiers and guards alike, she doesn’t doubt that this woman could do anything. But… “You’re going to leave us?” They’ll never make it on their own. Or maybe they could, maybe, if they could tear themselves away from their grief and their pain, but Lira knows it wouldn’t be the same. She’d feel less safe. This woman is the only one she's seen who somehow has _direction_ after all that happened. Without her, Lira would still be trapped under a corpse. 

The woman looks at her. The firelight casts shadows on her face but her eyes stay dark. “I’ll come back.” It sounds like a promise, but it's not one she can keep, and Lira knows this. 

“And who would take the queen's place?” A woman, shifting unhappily on the ground. Lira had bandaged her burned arms only a few hours before.

A thoughtful silence falls over the group, those of them who’ve gathered close to the fire and are tentatively trying to piece together a plan for the future form the ashes.

_Someone just as bad,_ Lira thinks. That’s who would take the throne. They’re all thinking it.

“Why does it even matter? The dragon queen’s throne would only be passed to some other mad fuck. There’s no _reason_ to fight her.” Not now, when they’ve already lost everything they ever had. Families, homes, jobs, lives. The burned woman is only saying what they all know. It doesn’t sound like treason when it’s true.

“King Jon of the North ordered his armies to retreat,” the tanner’s boy offers quietly.

One of the men scoffs. “His armies that he attacked us with, that fought for her,” he points out. “What’s the difference between a queen and a king when they both let us die?”

The woman speaks up, then. “King Jon doesn’t have dragons.” She looks up at them, and this time the fire is reflected in her eyes. “He doesn’t have to be a good man, or a good king, he just has to be a human one.”

No one can argue with that. No, it doesn’t sound much like treason at all, not when it’s true. Not when treason doesn’t seem like a crime at all, not when compared to what those with crowns do.

“When you kill her,” a teenager says, looking up at the woman, “don’t let her speak. That’s what she uses to get the dragons.”

“When you kill her,” growls a man with dark eyes and grey hair, “don’t waste time explaining why. Dragons don’t deserve apologies.”

“When you kill her,” Lira whispers, “don’t let them kill you. When you kill her, come find us.”

 

She leaves the next night, once she’s helped them string up branches so that there’s shelter from the sky. Though they’re far enough away from King’s Landing that it’s hard to see, there’s still ash on the breeze. She entrusts a few of those who have some semblance of a fighting spirit with the arrows and the bow. She gives the babe to Lira, and crouches down to meet the eyes of the little girl who’s continued to cling to her. The little girl doesn’t cry. She’s like the woman in that way. Lira doesn’t doubt that this woman has faced horrors in her life, long before dragon fire. Nobody unaccustomed to tragedy can withstand it with such a blank face, with such a straight spine and steady words.

The woman reaches out one hand and cups the girl’s face, letting her lean into her palm. “Be safe,” she says gently, firmly, and the little girl nods with a tiny jerk of her head, watching the woman with her wide eyes and chapped lips. The woman’s mouth twitches. 

When she stands, she meets Lira’s eyes. “Take care of each other.” Her eyes sweep over all of them, all these people who’ve lost everything, these people who followed her when they had no reason to. These people who she saved, when she had no reason to. They’re all watching her, the elderly and the young, the men and the woman, and they’re silent. Lira steps forward, to take the little girl’s hand, and though the girl doesn’t take it, she steps closer.

The woman takes a breath. For the first time, she looks almost overcome. Three days has not been nearly enough time. Barely anyone has slept, their nightmares keeping each other awake. The children have become fiercely protective of each other. There's still blood on the woman's face, and her bruises have yet to go green, so dark they're almost black. 

“What do we call you?” It’s the first time anyone has asked, but Lira has to know. The woman meets Lira’s eyes once more, and she pauses. 

“Arry Underfoot,” she says eventually. “If I don’t ever make it back, and you continue on to Storm’s End, tell them Arry Underfoot asks for your protection.” Lira nods, though she doesn’t understand the woman’s words, and then with one final deep breath the woman swings herself up onto the horse’s back, still bareback, and it moves without prompting.

Arry Underfoot doesn’t look back once. The silent little girl near Lira’s legs watches her until she’s faded from view entirely, and then takes a breath and turns her back on the horizon. 

**Author's Note:**

> uhh let me know what you think!!
> 
> pls review friends :)


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